(Note: The Attorney General Often Deviates From Prepared Remarks)

   Good morning, Chairman Gregg, Ranking Member Hollings, and Members of the Subcommittee:

   We are at war. And I know that as we watch events unfolding overseas, our prayers and our thoughts are with those young men and women who are defending freedom. We pray also for those families who have lost loved ones or whose loved ones have been captured or are missing in action. Their efforts in the defense of freedom – a noble cause – will never be forgotten. We will honor their sacrifice with an ever-vigilant commitment in our war on terrorism.

   Indeed, the first and overriding priority of this budget – and of the Department – is to protect America from acts of terrorism and bring terrorists to justice. I am pleased to be here to present the President's fiscal year 2004 budget request for the Department of Justice, and I thank you for your continued assistance in providing the Department of Justice with resources to detect, disrupt, and dismantle terrorist activity.

   The Justice Department's terrorism prevention efforts have included planning for the possibility of intensified conflict with Iraq. Last spring, the FBI began developing an action plan to address any related threats that might face us in this conflict. An Iraqi Task Force plan was developed in addition to the integrated prevention security framework put in place after the September 11th attacks.

   The Iraqi Task Force plan includes:

• Around the clock operations at FBI Headquarters and Field Offices since the escalation of hostilities with Iraq;
  
  
• Outreach to Middle Eastern and Islamic communities in the United States;
  
  
• Analysis of prior cases involving Iraq and/or supporters of Iraq to identify potential intelligence targets or persons of interest;
  
  
• Stepped up monitoring of individuals suspected of links to Iraqi hostile forces or other terrorist organizations; and
  
  
• Voluntary interviews of 11,000 U.S.-based Iraqis to obtain counter-terrorism information and intelligence information, as well as to identify any backlash threats to Iraqis in the United States.

   Out of these voluntary interviews, we appreciate the valuable information we have gained from the cooperation of the Iraqi community in the United States. This cooperation has assisted us in our efforts in Iraq, as well as in our own domestic anti-terrorism efforts. We have gathered intelligence about such things as Iraqi bunkers, tunnel systems, telecommunications networks, manufacturing plants and Iraqi military officials. This information is being shared and analyzed by our law enforcement, military and intelligence officials.

   On March 25, 2003, the President submitted a supplemental budget request for fiscal year 2003 to address the continuing threat to the national security of the United States posed by Iraq. For the Department of Justice, the request includes $500 million for the Counterterrorism Fund to meet terrorism-related prevention and response requirements.

   Among our top priorities for the use of this funding are critical items for the FBI that address response capabilities, security enhancements, language translation services, operational field expenses, and surveillance support. We also anticipate using a small portion of this funding to meet increased U.S. Marshals Service security requirements for the federal judiciary and to upgrade the capability of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review for its role in the FISA warrant process.

   The President's overall Justice Department budget request I am discussing today will strengthen our capacity to fulfill all of the Department's top priorities. The President's budget requests $23.3 billion for the Department of Justice, including $19 billion in discretionary funding and $4.3 billion for the Department's mandatory and fee-funded accounts.

   The September 11 attacks made it clear that America's defense requires a new culture of prevention, nurtured by cooperation, built on coordination, and rooted in our Constitutional liberties. The Justice Department is battling terrorism by integrating, not separating, our law enforcement capacity; and integrating, not separating, our intelligence capabilities.

   Our integrated terrorism prevention strategy is having an impact on terrorist threats. Listen to the recorded conversation between charged terrorist-cell-member Jeffrey Battle and an FBI informant on May 8, 2002, in Portland, Oregon.

   In his conversation unsealed in court, Battle explained why his threatening enterprise was not as organized as he thought it should be (quote):

". . . because we don't have support. Everybody's scared to give up any money to help us. You know what I'm saying? Because that law that Bush wrote about, you know, supporting terrorism, whatever, the whole thing . . . Everybody's scared . . . He made a law that says for instance I left out of the country and I fought, right, but I wasn't able to afford a ticket but you bought my plane ticket, you gave me the money to do it . . . By me going and me fighting and doing that they can, by this new law, they can come and take you and put you in jail."

   Mr. Chairman, terrorists clearly recognize the effectiveness of the laws passed by Congress and utilized by the Department to disrupt terrorist activity.

   It is a credit to our new investigative tools, the hard work of the law enforcement community and our intelligence agencies, as well as a vigilant public, that we have not suffered another major terrorist attack in this country. The FBI indicates that since September 11th, 2001, over 100 terrorist plots have been disrupted.

   Nevertheless, as the President recently stated, "There is no such thing as perfect security against a hidden network of cold-blooded killers. Yet abroad and at home, we're not going to wait until the worst dangers are upon us."

   Therefore, we will continue to seek the assistance of Congress as we enhance a culture of prevention and ensure the resources of our government are dedicated to defending Americans. Now, I would like to give you a brief overview of the results to date of our integrated prevention strategy to fight the war on terrorism:

     First, we are gathering and cultivating detailed intelligence on terrorism in the U.S.:

• Hundreds of suspected terrorists have been identified and tracked throughout the United States;
  
  
• Our human sources of intelligence have doubled;
  
  
• Our counter-terrorism investigations have doubled in one year;
  
  
• Over 18,000 subpoenas and search warrants have been issued; and
  
  
• Over 1,000 applications in 2002 were made to the FISA court targeting terrorists, spies and foreign powers that threaten our security, including 170 emergency FISAs. This is more than 3 times the total number of emergency FISAs obtained in the 23 years prior to September 11th.

     Second, we are arresting and detaining potential terrorists:

• Four alleged terrorist cells broken up in Buffalo, Portland, Detroit and Seattle;
  
  
• 228 criminal charges brought to date;
  
  
• 113 individuals convicted or pled guilty, including shoe-bomber Richard Reid, "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, and three of the six members of the Buffalo cell – 2 more of whom pled guilty just last week, joining another defendant who is already cooperating; and
  
  
• 478 deportations linked to the September 11th investigation.

    Third, we are dismantling the terrorist financial network:

• 36 designated terrorist organizations;
  
  
• $124 million in assets frozen and over 600 accounts frozen around the world; and
  
  
• 70 investigations into terrorist financing with 23 convictions or guilty pleas to date.

    Fourth, we are disrupting potential terrorist travel:

• 9 major alien smuggling networks disrupted;
  
  
• Hundreds of terrorists and criminals stopped through the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERs) including:

• 11 suspected terrorists, with at least one known member of al Qaeda;
  
  
• 649 aliens stopped at the border who were wanted criminals, had committed past felonies, or violated other laws; and
  
  
• 77 felons identified through domestic enrollment who were in the country illegally, including a murderer, cocaine traffickers, child molesters, and individuals convicted of assault with a deadly weapon.

    Fifth, we are building our long-term counter-terrorism capacity:

• A near three-fold increase in counter terrorism funds;
  
  
• Over 1,000 new and redirected FBI agents dedicated to counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence;
  
  
• 250 new Assistant U.S. Attorneys;
  
  
• 66 Joint Terrorism Task Forces;
  
  
• 337% increase in JTTF staffing; and
  
  
• Fly Away Expert Teams for rapid deployment to hot spots worldwide.

   We have made tremendous progress, but there is always more to be done. To that end, the budget request includes an increase of $598.2 million for programs that support our mission to prevent and combat terrorism, including $516.2 million to enhance or complement the FBI's Counter-terrorism Program.

   Even as the men and women of the Justice Department fight the war on terrorism, we do so within a framework of justice that upholds our other crucial responsibilities. I will briefly review these other core missions:

   First, the Department of Justice has taken decisive action to combat corporate corruption and punish corporate law-breakers. The relentless work of the Corporate Fraud Task Force, chaired by Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, has resulted in:

• Over 200 investigations opened into suspected corporate fraud;
  
  
• Over 200 people charged to date;
  
  
• 70 convictions obtained to date;
  
  
• $20 million in assets frozen; and
  
  
• $14 million in forfeiture to date - and we are seeking to forfeit more than $2.5 billion to restore to the creditors and investors who lost this money.

   The Department is committed to ensuring a marketplace of integrity and restoring the confidence of American investors and protecting their assets. To that end the fiscal year 2004 budget requests $24.5 million to support the Corporate Fraud Task Force.

   Second, the Department of Justice has continued to fight the scourge of illegal drugs. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, we have:

• Increased the seizures of drug assets from major drug trafficking organizations by 20 percent;
  
  
• Dismantled 305 drug trafficking organizations in 2002 alone;
  
  
• More than doubled the amount of heroin seizures from 2000 to 2002;
  
  
• Reached a 9-year low in student drug use; and
  
  
• Attacked the nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism, including bringing charges in San Diego against individuals for conspiring to trade heroin and hashish for anti-aircraft missiles, which were allegedly intended to be sold to al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.

   The FY 2004 budget request includes $117.9 million to augment our efforts to reduce the availability of illegal drugs, to identify and dismantle drug trafficking organizations, and to support drug treatment.

   Third, the Department of Justice has prevented and prosecuted crimes against children by:

• Allocating $2.5 million to develop an effective, nationwide AMBER Alert system;
  
  
• Reassigning 3 FBI investigative analysts to work full time at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children;
  
  
• Supporting Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces across the nation; and
  
  
• Dedicating a total of $15.2 million to the FBI's Innocent Images National Initiative, a $3.6 million increase, to keep pace with a nearly 2,000 percent increase in investigations since 1996 and to combat the proliferation of child pornography and child sexual exploitation via the Internet.

   Fourth, the Department of Justice has provided increasing protection to Americans from gun crime. In the first two years of this Administration's Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative to combat gun crime, we have:

• Increased federal gun crime prosecutions by 32 percent, which has helped lock up repeat offenders and lower crime in cities across America. For example:

• In Philadelphia, robberies at gunpoint dropped 11 percent, and the homicide rate is the lowest it has been since 1985; and
  
  
• In Kansas City, the murder rate dropped 23 percent, to its lowest level in three decades. This reduction translates to 27 more people alive today who might not have been if previous trends had continued.

• U.S. Attorneys have:

• Charged 10,634 defendants for violating gun statutes;
  
  
• Convicted and taken 7,747 gun criminals off the streets so far.

• In 2002, the conviction rate for federal gun crime prosecutions was nearly 90 percent, and more than half of these gun criminals were sentenced to more than five years in a federal prison.

   Our successes in these areas would not be possible without the diligence and hard work of state and local law enforcement agencies. To that end, the Administration is requesting $8.5 billion for first responders and state and local law enforcement – $2 billion in the current war supplemental that is pending and $6.5 billion in the FY 2004 budget requests for the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security.

   Fifth, the Department of Justice has protected vigorously the civil rights of all Americans:

• The Department has strengthened our Civil Rights Division with an approximately 10% increase in both full-time attorneys (355) and total employees (709) enforcing our nation's civil rights laws since the beginning of the Bush Administration;
  
  
• 12% increase in successful prosecutions of criminal civil rights violations from previous two years
  
  
• 100% increase in settling pattern or practice police misconduct cases from previous two years
  
  
• $500 million obtained for traditional black colleges through settlement of a 25-year-old desegregation lawsuit
  
  
• The Department has prosecuted more than 90 discriminatory backlash hate crimes in the wake of September 11:

• By securing the conviction of Zachary Rolnik for violating the civil rights of Dr. James J. Zogby, the president of the Arab-American Institute; and
  
  
• By securing the guilty plea of Earl Leslie Krugel for conspiracy to manufacture and detonate bombs at a mosque and a field office of United States Congressman Darrell Issa of California.

• The Department has prosecuted 43 non-September 11 related hate crimes cases in the last two years, and initiated over 600 additional non-September 11 hate crimes investigations;
  
  
• The Department has coordinated the Voting Rights Initiative to ensure access, honesty, and integrity at the polls on Election Day that resulted in a smooth election with far fewer complaints than were reported in recent years; and
  
  
• The Department has investigated, prosecuted, and convicted record numbers of human trafficking and sex trafficking cases, doubling the number of trafficking prosecutions – and doubling the number of convictions – over the previous two years.

   Obviously, our Department has other vital missions I have not been able to address fully here but would be happy to address during questions. For example, the Department's Antitrust Division successfully settled the Microsoft case, receiving praise from Judge Kollar-Kotelly for "the clear, consistent, and coherent manner" in which the Division reached this historic settlement. On the criminal enforcement front, last year, individuals convicted for antitrust violations and related criminal offenses received a record average sentence of greater than 18 months.

   Mr. Chairman, as we work to achieve our Department's objectives, I appreciate your continued support and I would be pleased to answer your questions.

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